


The Bird that Flew the Nest

by anakatieskywalker



Series: A Stranger World [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DCU, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Bruce and his children really need to stop fighting, Gen, awkward family dynamics, no editing we die like robins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-23 10:34:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14330601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anakatieskywalker/pseuds/anakatieskywalker
Summary: Dick has always known how to make an entrance, but in his defense, this time it wasn't entirely his fault.





	1. Chapter 1

   The night that Richard Grayson returned to Gotham was just on the uncomfortable side of balmy, as the summers in the city tended to be. The concrete was still warm with the heat of the day, and the blur of black with just a hint of blue was galavanting across the rooftops.  It was almost too easy of a night, but with the Justice League having just formed, and Superman back from the dead, it made sense that the scum of the city was laying low. If Dick wasn't careful though, he would get sucked into memories of the old days-when the Bat hadn't seemed so dark, thanks to the streak of light that always seemed to be bouncing around him.

   Eventually, he made his way to the BatCave, purposely arriving just after Batman went on his nightly patrol. He would know that someone had been out before him, and he might even catch word about some blue finger stripes, but Dick Grayson wasn’t worried. 

   The people of Gotham didn’t know of Nightwing, not like they did the Bat. 

   Nightwing was just a far off tale that had sprouted in the not-so-far-off city of Bludhaven. Between himself and the Red Robin, the industrial city that wasn’t anywhere near as developed as Gotham was facing a lower crime rate than it had in the previous decades. The scum of Gotham no longer washed up in their crime syndicates without going unchecked, and even the police force was having the grime removed from the inside out. Corrupted officers were busted left and right, and Officer Grayson seemed to be making a name for himself as the beat cop that just wanted to truly help people... while also being pretty easy on the eyes.

   Dick found a spot hidden in the darkness of the cave, and he waited. Bruce would come back eventually, and they would talk, or fight. Either way, there were things that needed to be said, and he was done holding his tongue.

   In the meantime, he let himself get lost in the memories he had of the cave, all the time he spent there, coming back from patrol to find Alfred ready with some late night hot chocolate. Dick was pretty sure the ghost of the child he had once been still hung around here, the excited kid who trusted Bruce to the point of it almost being dangerous. Of course, that was back before everything that had happened, before Dick lost a brother, and Bruce ostracized the third. It had been a long time since he and Bruce had been able to communicate easily.

   The one thing the vigilante had not anticipated when infiltrating his former home, was the presence of Batman’s newest team. The Justice League wasn’t just a group of people that got together when desperate times called for desperate measures, like Dick had thought. But they rather considered themselves to be Batman’s friends, and wasn’t that even more odd than everything Dick had ever seen.

   They arrived not long after Dick himself, and the man found himself sinking farther back into the shadows, hoping to observe them, when two of them halted. Superman, and the one the press had taken to calling Cyborg, exchanged a look, which Wonder Woman herself quickly took notice of. 

   The only two that seemed oblivious to Dick’s presence were Aquaman and the Flash, who Dick was fairly certain was younger than Tim. What Bruce had been thinking when he'd recruited the guy onto his 'End-of-the-World' team, he could only guess.

   “What is it?” The Amazonian woman asked, sounding slightly on guard, her hand falling towards her sword. It would be a sight to see, Dick knew, to catch Wonder Woman in action, but he wasn’t there to fight, at least not with the League. He didn't even want to get into it with his adoptive father, but as the years went by, it seemed like the only way Dick could be heard was through a verbal sparring match with the older man. 

   “There’s another heartbeat.” Superman said calmly, and Dick should not feel giddy about how  _ Superman _ knew he was there. Tim would be so embarrassed of him right now.

   “Could it be Alfred?”

   “No, the butler’s upstairs, working on something.” Cyborg replied that time, and really? ‘The Butler,’ Alfred was so much more than a butler, this guy had no idea. Finally, Dick got tired of running his own commentary in his head, and flipped down from his perch as the heroes in front of him tensed for a fight. He landed behind the Flash with a flourish, because everything he did was for show, and the speedster started.

   “Never, and I mean never, refer to Alfred as  _ just _ the butler.” Dick’s eyes met each of the four people in front of him, although they wouldn’t know that, thanks to the domino mask.

   “What brings you here, stranger?” Diana demanded, and Dick crossed his arms. If anything, the League were the strangers here. This had been his home, once upon a time, he had more history in this building, and probably even this city than any of them. Dick was tethered to Gotham, whether he liked it or not. It was as though the city had a rope tied around his chest, and just when he thought he might have escaped it for good, he was pulled back, skidding into painful memory after painful memory.

   “Business.” 

   The Amazon’s hand trailed down to her sword, and everyone around her shifted slightly as well, assuming that he would attack at a moment’s notice.

   He pulled a hand out from where it was crossed against his chest, “I’m not here to fight you, believe me. If I had wanted to do that, I wouldn’t be standing here. Plain and simple. I’m here for Batman, and for old time’s sake.”

   “Are you - were you part of that?” The words were out of the Flash’s mouth before Dick really had time to register, and the speedster immediately looked chaste at having let the words escape his mouth. Dick traced his line of sight to the suit semi-hidden in the shadows, still standing in its glass case. 

   When he turned back to the others, his shoulders sagged a little, and he could tell they knew some things from Bruce’s storied past as Batman. “Not exactly…” He ran a hand through his hair, and it became clear that before this night ended, they would all have to know the truth. 

   Alfred would ring his neck for not checking in before diving head first into the mess that was his relationship with his former guardian. Briefly, he wondered if the floor of the cave could open up and swallow him whole, because it was one thing to face Bruce, and another thing entirely to tell the man's teammates about the past that haunted the Wayne family.

   “It depends, on what part of it all you’re referring to, and I guess how you assign blame. I am the reason that Jason ever got the mantle, and I had a bit more to do with his life, but I am not responsible for the death of Jason Todd. The only person that can take credit for that is the Joker.” Dick didn’t feel as much like showing off anymore, and he didn't even feel like facing Bruce, because of how heavy everything had become.

   He liked to think that he handled things better than Bruce ever did, but if he was honest with himself, they were probably one and the same. Bruce built a shrine to the hero that had once been with them, and buried the body of a son he barely got to have, and Dick had memorialized Jason in other ways. His shoulder blade itched subconsciously. 

   A glance around the room showed some more confusion, and finally, Superman spoke up. “Who are you?” He was incredulous, and Dick had to credit him, because Clark Kent wasn’t just a superhero, but a reporter with the Daily Planet. Newly reinstated, thanks to Bruce Wayne, but a reporter nonetheless.

   He stuck his chin out towards the cyborg, “He seems to have figured it out, why don’t you ask him?”

   The League’s attention shifted to their teammate, who opened his mouth, only to be cut off by the roar of the Batmobile re-entering the cave. “Dick!” Bruce was out of the monster of a vehicle before it fully came to a stop, cape flapping menacingly behind him, but Dick just straightened up. He’d fought this fight a hundred times, once more wouldn’t hurt.

   “Or we could do it that way.” He quipped sarcastically, and he caught Diana’s quirked eyebrow. Dick shrugged a shoulder at the woman, before reaching up and pulling off the domino. He wouldn't be needing that anymore.

   The gravity of the situation seemed to hit the Amazon then, and Dick turned to see Superman's face morph into one of recognition.

   "Wait, you're-It's 2018 and you unironically go by the name Dick?" The incredibly young voice of the Flash reached Dick's ears, and he couldn't help but smile.

   "You're Dick Grayson, Gotham Academy golden boy, and a member of the Bludhaven Police Department."

   "And you're Victor Stone. Babs owes me twenty dollars, she was convinced that you were too smart to ever get into all of this." Dick was full on grinning, ignoring Bruce standing there all huffy about his presence in Gotham.

   Victor seemed dumbfounded for a second, before raising his eyebrow, "You bet that I wasn't smart enough to stay away from this business?"

   "Nah, I bet you had too much heart to just ignore everything around you. If we were all stupid, do you really think any one of us could possibly maintain a secret identity?" Dick spoke softly, and felt rewarded when Victor returned his smile.

   Bruce cleared his throat, and Dick knew that it was time to get into it. After all, he hadn't come here to make friends with the people Bruce decided to call on to save the world instead of his own family, and maybe that's what made it so much harder for him to look at him without seething as he finally acknowledged his guardian.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick gets some surprise information, on top of dealing with his emotionally constipated father figure & his new friends.

   A long time ago, a circus made its way into Gotham, and put on a show with its famed family of acrobats. The Flying Graysons.

   The lights were bright, the air inside the tent was humming with excitement, which all too quickly turned to horror, as the flying turned into falling. Two bodies were crumpled on the ground, people were rushing out of the tent, hiding their children’s faces. 

   There’s one child, whose face no one thinks to hide, because those are his parents on the ground.

   It’s a sight that will forever be seared into his mind.

   A few days later, he’s taken in by the richest man in Gotham. Not long after that, he’s running along rooftops, and learning the difference between _justice_ and _revenge_.

   Years go by this way, and he never feels as light as he once did while bathed in the bright lights and cheers that come with performing in the circus tent, and he’s flying through the air for different reasons. But at least he’s still flying.

 

* * *

 

   The tension in the room is palpable, thick enough for Dick to feel like he’s breathing water instead of air. If he’s honest, he’s more hurt than angry about everything, but Bruce had never been good with any form of feelings, so they muddle through it.

   “So it takes me patrolling your city for you to remember that we exist, huh?” The audience wasn’t quite what Dick was hoping for but he guessed it couldn’t hurt too much for the other heroes to know that someone else gave a _damn_.

   “Dick.” Bruce is growling already, which is a sign that this whole thing is going to go bad, bad, _bad._ But Dick feels insulted, like his entire life is something easily forgettable, and isn’t that the kicker, because to anyone that didn’t know Dick suited up every night to do another round with the rapists and robbers and scum, that’s exactly what he is.

   An orphan who got picked up by Bruce Wayne, and turned from a circus freak into Gotham’s flirt, then left it all, or was disowned by his adoptive father (depending on what gossip rag you listened to), and went to become a simple beat cop in a nearby city.

   “No, really, good to know. Next time the world is ending _,_ we’ll make sure to swing by and do a few rounds so that maybe you’ll let us help.”

   “It’s not like that, Dick.”

   “Oh really?” Dick feels slightly hysterical, like maybe he should be falling through the air instead of yelling at Bruce in front of his _friends._

   But he’s here, and since when is Bruce the type of guy to have friends? He holds everyone at arm’s length, Dick _knows_ this.

   “Because the world was, in fact, ending. I know that, Bruce. You can’t hide everything from us, from Barbara, forever. The world was ending, and you chose to call on four people that you had never even worked with before-hell, you brought Superman back from the dead for this job. But you didn’t call the people that you literally raised for this.”

   In a twisted sort of way, Dick feels good, it feels good to finally give a voice to the pain and the frustration he was feeling. He couldn’t do that to Tim or Barbara, he knew they felt the same way, and Damian was too young.

   Dick wasn’t going to dump his anger issues on the only one of them that was being pushed away by his own father.

   “Bruce, what’s he talking about?” Diana stepped forward, trying to get a hint at the whole picture. Dick imagined that wherever she came from, she must have had some training in diplomacy for how calm she seems.

   But this isn’t diplomacy, this is the entirely messed up family that, for some utterly stupid reason like loyalty, keeps trying to come back together.

   Bruce doesn’t answer, and Dick wonders why the universe decided that they should all be thrown together, with everything wrong with them, and all their mistakes. It’s a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode.

   Diana’s eyebrow raises, Dick decides that she’s the most dedicated person he’s ever met when it comes to getting an answer out of Bruce Wayne. Bruce stands his ground for longer than he thinks any sane person would, and so he speaks up.

   “He didn’t tell you, why am I not surprised?” Dick asks rhetorically, bitterness is clawing its way out of him so that it can finally rear its ugly head.

   “Batman never used to work alone, you know. He had Robin, multiple Robins, Batgirl, Spoiler… There’s more of us than you would believe.”

   The surprise is evident on everyone’s faces, and Dick continues. “Let’s put it this way, every kid who ever came into contact with Bruce is in this business one way or another. Hell, his biological son was raised by the League of Assassins.”

   It’s blatantly obvious at that point that no one was expecting that, and Dick can’t bring himself to care that Bruce might not have wanted him to reveal it. He was hurting, they all were. 

   Bruce had thrown them all out, like toys he had outgrown, and they were angry. Dick can feel the blood pounding in his head, and he doesn’t pay attention to whatever bullshit excuse Bruce feeds to the rest of his _League_. 

   For all he knows, Bruce had been planning to use the two teams against each other, in the case of one of them turning.

   It’s been a while since Dick could even pretend to have the pretense of knowing what his mentor was thinking. The man had been running on his own for the past few years, seemingly angrier than he had ever been. Not even bothering to acknowledge his children, one of which he ran a company with.

   The room falls silent, everyone digesting the news, or fact checking it in the case of Victor, and seemingly waiting with baited breath for the next outburst.

   Dick ends up looking at Bruce for a long time, who seems to have lost the ability to meet anyone’s eye, before shaking his head.

   “I don’t know why I even bothered, you never change, Bruce.” He sighs, allowing his lungs to fully deflate and starving himself of oxygen for a moment.

   Dick’s not sure why he feels so full of disappointment, Bruce had written them off in all the ways that had mattered. But a part of him had hoped that he would show up here, and Bruce would have simply forgotten about them. That he’d gotten so wrapped up in a case that he forgot to be a human.

   It wouldn’t have been the first time.

   He turns away, and starts to walk out. Alfred’s going to kill him when he finds out that Dick made it all the way to the cave and didn’t even say hello, but not as much as he’s going to kill Bruce when he plays back the recordings.

   He wonders if he can get away with not telling the others about his field trip to Gotham. He doubts it, by the time he gets back it will be later than anyone patrols.

   Too late to be rested enough to go to work.

   “Dick.” Bruce calls, and he freezes. Because this wasn’t in the script before, Bruce has never felt remorse that quickly, never vocalizes it.

   Dick honestly doesn’t have a clue as to what’s about to happen, but he turns around anyway. Babs will tell him later that he was thinking with his heart and not his head again.

   Dick will insist that he’s good at thinking on his feet.

   “Jason’s alive.” Are the two words that are next to come out of Bruce’s mouth, and Dick feels the whole world tilt out of balance. For once, Dick isn’t comfortable with the feeling of falling, he doesn’t greet it like an old friend, and turn it into flying like he does every other night.

_Jason’s alive_. The words seem to be ringing through his skull with no end in sight. His brother is alive, his little wing, and the only word Dick can choke out is “How?”

   Everyone turns to Victor, and oh god, this kid was just a year older than Jay. How had they managed to all get sucked into this? Tragedy has a way of forging reluctant heroes.

   Victor explains it as many times as Dick needs, and when he shows Dick the footage of Jason, alive, breathing, _clawing his way out of the ground_ , Dick wishes that he was beaten within an inch of his life a hundred times, if it meant that he could have protected Jay from this.

   He sits in silence for a long moment, steeling himself for what he has to say next, knowing that he’s going to have to explain this to his siblings over and over, well past sunrise.

   None of them really knew Jay, having come around after the fallen Robin. They’d only heard hushed stories of the boy that had once been, all tinged with regret, from Dick and Alfred. Bruce had always stayed stubbornly silent on the topic of his lost son, his lost soldier.

   Babs was the only one who had known him, having already been Batgirl for some time, but it's one thing to occasionally pair up with the mouthy rebel that was Jason Todd’s Robin, and another thing entirely to have lived with him. To have brought him into the vigilante business, and trained him to take over the Robin mantle in Gotham.

   This wasn’t some nightmare that would go away when he woke up, or a criminal that he could beat into submission, or help to reform. This was Dick’s brother, his first brother, the lost piece of his second family, and he was alive.

   Dick’s face goes hard as he stands up, and Bruce finally looks up at him. “This stays in house.” Murmurs of dissent go around the table where they had all settled when Victor had launched into the explanation of his information gathering, but Dick raises his hand to silence them.

   It’s a nice thought, that these people, these outsiders who had all come together for the sake of the world wanted to help, but this wasn’t the world they were talking about. This was Dick’s family, his brother.

   “This is our city, our family, our mess. We deal with it on our terms. None of you are from Gotham, you never knew Jay. As nice as backup would be, we have more than enough of our own.”

   “If we send the whole League in there, Jason will view it as a threat. We don’t want to fight.” Eyebrows are raised at that, and Dick levels his gaze to Bruce as he repeats himself, “We don’t want a fight. Jason is family, he needs to remember that. We need to show him that he’s wanted. That we want him back.”

   Dick wasn’t sure how this was all going to go, there probably would be a fight, considering the fact that Jason had somehow become a top mob boss, who, rumor had it, had a bag full of _heads,_ rather than return home to them.

   Of course, the little voice in the back of Dick’s head whispered, it’s been a long time since this place has been a home, to any of Bruce’s children.

   Dick leaves the cave that night, knowing that he’s going to be back soon. As soon as he explains everything to his siblings, and gets them to agree to help. He knows Babs is almost a sure-fire yes, even if she doesn’t really want to. She’d have his six to hell and back, if he asked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive! Surprisingly. Finals are officially over, as is my first year of college. It's a wonderful feeling.
> 
> I'm debating if I want to delve into how they get Jason back, or just skip over that part, because that's gonna be a crapload of hurt, and its been covered a hundred times in various mediums. 
> 
> *Disclaimer* while I do my best to hunt down info on the comics, if I really were to do this right, I would probably have to spend a couple hundred dollars on comics. And as I said previously, I'm in college. I need to keep my money for other things. 
> 
> So we're going to take some artistic liberty. Partially because I'm also fusing this stuff with the movie universe, and partially because I want to have all of my sons exist in the same medium. Basically, preset age gaps aren't a thing & I'm figuring this all out as I go. Later on, when I solidify all that, I might drop it into a chapter's notes, just so you all aren't living in constant ambiguity, and subject to my every whim. 
> 
> I have yet to decide if I'm going to leave this piece as is, now that this chapter is here. I think it's at a decent stopping point, to where I could move on to other bits and pieces. Let me know what you all think, it'd be nice to get some input from other people that are familiar with all of this.
> 
> ... Last piece of info before I depart? If I can manage to crank out this little plot bubble in my head, you should be getting something very soon in this series, to help draw all of this stuff together.
> 
> Feel free to let me know what you think so far, and have a good day!

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I've had this part written for like the past four months, but I can't figure out how to finish it... So, here you go. Hopefully having this part out there will help me get the dang motivation to finish it.
> 
> General appreciation is appreciated, if you see any mistakes, please know that I likely have already seen them, but as my tags say: no editing, we die like robins. Maybe if I survive my finals I'll go back and fix things... yeah, that's a noble thought.


End file.
